Blood Trail

by Nancy Springer

  He settled himself behind the wheel but he didn’t start the car. He said, “I shouldn’t have laughed. All you know is what’s been in the news, right?”

  I gave him a look and didn’t answer.

  “Right,” he said. “But there’s a lot they don’t tell you. Such as, there is no evidence at all that any intruder was ever in that house.”

  “Maybe he wore gloves,” I said.

  “That only accounts for fingerprints. What about hairs, fibers, footprints, saliva, maybe a spot or two of blood? You can’t go someplace without leaving evidence. Dirt, dead skin particles, whatever—with the technology the state police have got, they would have found something if an intruder had been there. And there was no sign of forcible entry. How—”

  “Maybe some door wasn’t locked.”

  “The front door was unlocked when Cecily got home. Nathan said he locked the doors. Then he changed his story and said he wasn’t sure. His first story, he said he locked the doors and went to bed, his sister woke him up screaming, he went down and saw Aaron’s body, he called 911. He didn’t say a word about your phone calls. But the cops have your voice on the answering machine, they have Jamy and Cecily and two others to verify that you made the calls, so Nathan changed his story. Now he says it’s the phone that woke him up, and he answered it before Cecily came home and he saw the body. But to get to the downstairs phone from his bedroom, he had to walk past the body. So he says he got it upstairs. But that phone is in his parents’ bedroom, and the carpet had just been vacuumed, and there are no footmarks. And the downstairs phone has bloodstains on it.”

  I started to feel cold, remembering how I had felt so relieved when Nathan had answered, and now Dad was saying he had picked up the phone with—with blood on his hands.

  “Maybe it got there when he called 911.”

  “Okay, maybe. He says he wasn’t thinking, he touched Aaron, and that’s when he got blood all over him. Okay, fine, but Cecily would know whether he had blood on him when she got home, right?”

  Oh, my God.

  I just sat there. Couldn’t make myself ask.

  “And she’s not saying,” Dad answered the question I couldn’t ask. “The cops try to talk with her or hook her up to the polygraph, she just gets hysterical.”

  God have mercy. Poor Aardy.

  “They can’t make her testify against her brother anyway,” Dad said, “but they don’t need to. There’s plenty of physical evidence. For starters, Nathan’s footprints are in the blood trail all over the house.”

  Cold. I felt cold. So cold I couldn’t speak.

  “Somebody—and I for one think it must have been Nathan—had cleaned up the blood trail,” Dad said, “but you can still see it under black light. Kitchen, living room, stairs, kitchen again, and Nathan’s footprints are in it all the way.”

  I found my voice. “So he was stupid, he cleaned it up, his footprints got in it—”

  “But there are no other footprints in it. Only his and Aaron’s.”

  I turned away, staring out the car window at the night like it could tell me something.

  I heard Dad’s voice. “Use your brain, son.”

  God damn everything. I whispered, “But … but why would Nathan kill Aaron?”

  “Ah.” Dad actually sounded like I’d said something right. “That’s the prosecution’s one weak point. Motive. But with all the physical evidence, they don’t really need to prove motive. I mean, brother killing brother, ask the cops. Something like ninety percent of domestic calls where it’s brother fighting brother, sooner or later it ends up in murder. But I bet the funeral preacher didn’t mention the first crime in the Bible, did he? I bet he didn’t talk about Cain and Abel.”

  I didn’t say anything, just sat there, but Dad kept talking. “They’ll send him up for psychiatric examination,” he said. “He’ll probably plead insane. Maybe he is psycho. You should have heard the cops at the bar talking about his lie detector test.”

  That made me sit up and listen. “What about his lie detector test?”

  “No reactions. None. No nerves, no emotions, nothing. Like he’s got no conscience at all.”

  Cold. So cold. Trying to joke, I said, “Me, I flunked the baseline.”

  “Oh, that old thing where they tell you to choose a number between one and five?”

  Why did he always have to know everything? I clenched my teeth. “I can’t believe Nathan did it.”

  “Son, like I said, get a clue. The minute I heard about the autopsy, I knew it was the brother.”

  “Huh? How?”

  “Seventy-three stab wounds, for God’s sake, that’s how! That’s not from some burglar the kid walked in on, or even a serial killer. Seventy-three stab wounds, that’s rage that’s been building for years, that’s a personal grudge, that’s hatred. Nobody hates that bad except family.”

  I hated him. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Yes, it does. Ask any cop what calls are the most dangerous, and they’ll tell you: domestic. Most murders, who do you suspect first? The family.”

  My head hurt from listening to him, my throat hurt, and my eyes hurt, and my chest hurt. I had to make my voice hard to talk at all. “I still want a gun.” I needed one. Hate calls. People throwing rocks in the night. Mr. Gingrich.

  “Forget it, son. Even if it was legal, I wouldn’t get you one.”

  “But I’m scared!”

  “Worst reason. Worst thing you can do when your emotions are out of control is grab a gun.” Dad’s voice changed gears into low. “I almost killed your mother once that way. Did she ever tell you?”

  I sat there with my mouth open.

  “She didn’t tell you? Your mother is too kind. Yes, I grabbed the pistol, and if it had been loaded, I would have offed her.” Now he sounded like he was talking about a TV show or something. “I could have been in jail now, instead of sitting here baby-sitting you.”

  Baby-sitting?

  “Too bad Nathan didn’t have a gun,” Dad said. “Bullets don’t make nearly so much mess.”

  I burst out, “Nathan didn’t do it! He couldn’t have! Why would he?”

  “Get real, son. There could be a thousand reasons. Aaron’s rather crude sense of humor, for one.”

  “But Aaron never meant—”

  “Doesn’t matter. You know how they fought. Didn’t Aaron break Nathan’s arm one time?”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t mean to. He was bigger—”

  “And he knew it. Gave Nathan reason to hate him. So. Take sibling rivalry, maybe add a girl—”

  “There wasn’t a girl! Not that I know of.”

  “But you don’t know everything, obviously.” God, I hate it when Dad gets sarcastic. “Anyway, Nathan did it. You know it and I know it and the police know it.”

  I demanded, “If everybody’s so damn sure it was Nathan, why don’t they arrest him?”

  “They did,” Dad said. “A few hours ago.”

  chapter ten

  “What a way to start senior year,” I said to Rose as I helped her put together a six-foot sub for somebody’s Sunday afternoon football party. “Most people, the worst that happens in their senior year is that somebody gets in a car accident.”

  “Car accident might happen yet,” Rose said. “It’s only October. They asked for provolone cheese.”

  I got out the cheese rounds and started laying them the length of the sub.

  “Wait till spring for car accidents,” Rose said, laying on the spicy Italian salami. “Prom time.”

  “Jeez, I hope not.” Things were rough enough. I’d pretty much blown the first month of school, felt so bad a lot of days I didn’t go, couldn’t concentrate when I did, and I was still catching up, and the football team was lousy and like I’d told Coach, I wasn’t playing, and … I don’t know, life just sucked.

  “How’s it going?” Rose asked like she was a mind reader.

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  I grun
ted and reached for the onions. Threw on enough to make somebody cry. Yeah, things were going better, like, the cops had caught the guys who were throwing rocks and stuff at the house. And Mrs. Ledbetter a.k.a. Pinto River Info Central had found out who was making hate calls. The CIA could take lessons from Mrs. Ledbetter. Anyway, Mrs. Ledbetter had talked with the minister, and he had talked with certain people, and most of the threats had stopped.

  And school wasn’t so bad anymore. A few kids called me names, but most of them acted the same as before. People were calmer, and starting to talk about football and stuff, not just Aaron’s murder. They were still taking sides, but now that Nathan was officially charged with murder, some people had changed their minds. Pinto River wasn’t worried about a serial killer anymore. Instead, some people were afraid of Nathan, because he wasn’t in jail; he was at home with electronic bracelets on his ankles. Yeah, the Gingriches were back in their house, with fresh paint and new carpeting, and Nathan was there with them.

  But Aardy wasn’t. Mrs. Ledbetter, who knew all, said little Cecily was so upset, nearly out of her mind, that her parents had sent her to stay at some kind of home or something in Wisconsin or someplace, to get her away from Pinto River.

  But some people said the Gingriches had sent her away to keep the police from finding out what she knew.

  And the people who were afraid of Nathan said Aardy’s parents had sent her away because they were afraid Nathan might kill her too.

  I tried not to think about it. Anyway, I wasn’t afraid of Nathan, and I didn’t feel like I needed a gun anymore. Hell, I could knock Nathan down with one hand tied behind me.

  It had been over a month now. CNN and USA Today had showed up after Nathan was arrested, wanting to interview me, but I wasn’t giving interviews, and they were long gone. Life was pretty much back to normal. Dad had actually called me a couple of times, now that I didn’t feel like talking to him. The worst was over, right?

  So why didn’t I feel better?

  “Jeremy,” Rose said, “for crying out loud, that’s way too many onions. Spread them out. Here, I’ll do it.” Out front, the bell dinged as somebody came in. A customer for me to take care of. Rose had me on the counter all the time now because I was nice and polite. It was just my luck to be so polite.

  It was an old couple. Well, not real old. Kind of medium old. Still walking around. I thought they looked at me odd while I took their order for spaghetti and meatballs, but I could have been imagining it. I told them it would be ten minutes, and I was handing the old guy his change when the wife asked me straight out, “Aren’t you the boy who said Nathan done it?”

  That took me by surprise because nobody had ever said it to my face before. I just stood there staring.

  “He never said Nathan done it, Ruth,” the old guy snapped at her. “He said Aaron was afraid of Nathan. There’s a difference.”

  “Um, right,” I managed to say.

  “Well, it just goes to show,” the woman told me kindly, “nobody should never say nothing against family to an outsider. Because it might get around, and now look what happened? They think that boy done it.”

  “Um, yes, ma’am.”

  All through lunch rush, I kept thinking about the way they’d recognized me. How’d they know me? I hadn’t been on TV or in the newspaper or anything, but damn near everybody knew who I was. It made me think of three, maybe four years ago, when a senior class girl got raped. They caught the rapist, some guy from the trailer park, I don’t remember who he was. I remembered who she was, though. Everybody did. She had a name, but nobody used it. She was just “the girl who got raped.” Like, it wasn’t her fault, but for the rest of her life in Pinto River that was what she was gonna be, the girl who got raped.

  And what was I going to be? The boy who was with Aaron before it happened? The boy who pointed the finger? The boy who said Nathan did it?

  It was never going to be over.

  I wondered whether the Gingriches were trying to make it be over. Whether they had done anything to Aaron’s room when they got the new carpet to replace the one with bloodstains on it and holes cut in it by the cops. I wondered whether they had painted Aaron’s room when they had painted over the rusty splatters on the walls. I wondered whether they had put his things away.

  There was no way of knowing. I wasn’t welcome in that house anymore.

  I wondered, if the cops came in there with their black light machine now, could they still find the blood trail?

  It didn’t matter. The blood trail was still around. Staining my life. And it was never going to wash away.

  Rose sent me home mid-afternoon. I was dead tired and I smelled like onions. But instead of going inside I just stood in the garage doorway looking at my bike and remembering the last time I rode it—and just then the Gingrich family drove by, Mr. and Mrs. in the front seat and Nathan in the back. All three of them turned their heads and gave me the stare, cold as fish.

  I went a little crazy.

  I didn’t even swear. I just slammed into the house, and right there on the counter sat the pumpkin Mom had bought because Jamy still likes to carve one for Halloween. It was a monster pumpkin, so big Mom had made me lug it in from the car, and it didn’t have eyes yet but it was looking at me, giving me the blank stare. No goddamn pumpkin better look at me that way. I grabbed the biggest butcher knife out of the drawer and went for it. I stabbed it so hard, I whammed the knife into the rind up to the hilt. One. I yanked the knife out and stabbed again. Two. And again, three, and again, four, and again, five, six, seven … I slashed, I chopped, I was starting to pant, and pumpkin shell and pumpkin juice flew all over the kitchen floor.

  “Booger,” screamed Jamy’s voice behind me, “what the—”

  “Go away,” I panted, stabbing. Ten, eleven, twelve. What the hell was the brat doing home, anyway? Why wasn’t she at the game or something? Or out shopping with Mom?

  She yelled, “That’s my pumpkin!”

  “Go away!”

  “What are you doing?”

  I turned on her with the knife in my hand. “PRACTICING!”

  My eyes must have looked cold-out crazy. Her face went white. She backed away.

  I drove the knife into the pumpkin again. Stab, stab, stab, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. My chest burned for air, my arms ached, my hands hurt, I sweated and started to feel weak. I’d stabbed a messy hole in the pumpkin but I had to keep going. Around twenty-seven I lost count. A little while after that, I quit. I think I’d got to maybe thirty-three, tops.

  I dropped the butcher knife in the pumpkin slop on the counter and stood there just staring at what I’d done, breathing hard and swallowing again and again and starting to shiver as my sweat went cold. What would it take to stab something—somebody—seventy-three times?

  I’d never tried to imagine something so evil.

  God have mercy.

  “Yaaaah!” shrilled a karate screech right behind me.

  God damn, I jumped! I turned, and there stood Jamy with a bloodred knife in her hand. “Yaaaah!” she yelled again as she lunged at me.

  She scared me so bad, I almost peed my pants. “Jamy, no!” I yelled—screamed, really. My hands flew up. Her knife skittered past them and whammed against my chest, leaving a red smear on my T-shirt. I was bleeding! That’s how I felt, even though I was starting to realize it wasn’t a knife, really. It was a rubber bayonet I used to play war with when I was a kid, and she’d smeared gobs of red lipstick all over it.

  “I’m killing you!” she screamed, stabbing again. Okay, it was just a rubber knife, and you’d think I could have fended her off. I’m a football jock, for God’s sake, or at least I used to be, and Jamy’s younger and smaller and I should have been able to stop her with one hand. But she attacked me like she meant it with all the hate in the universe, and it seemed so real, it just stunned me stupid. I couldn’t react. All I did was back away with my hands up, and she stabbed them out of the way and got me in the shoulder.

  �
�Stop it, Jamy!” I yelled.

  “Make me!” She came at me fierce as a fox and stabbed me with her rubber knife in the belly.

  “Stop, damn it!” I stumbled back from her.

  “Make me stop, Butthead! Yaaaaah!”

  I grabbed her by the arms and tried to hold her still. She fought worse than a wildcat, and I was scared to hold her too hard, because I might hurt her. She sliced at my forearms and squirmed away from me and stabbed me in the gut again.

  “Grab your big damn stupid knife!” she yelled.

  What the hell? The butcher knife, lying there on the counter? I couldn’t do that—I might hurt her! That butcher knife was as scary as a poisonous snake to me. I backed away, begging, “Jamy, stop, please!”

  “No. I’m going to kill you and you can’t stop me.” She lunged at me again.

  I am going to kill you. It made me sweat ice.

  And you can’t stop me.

  I couldn’t. Not without hurting her.

  I backed away from her, yelling and begging, but I couldn’t get the knife away from her, couldn’t knock her down, couldn’t even hit her. I slipped in orange pumpkin blood and fell on the floor and I just lay there. If it had been somebody else attacking me, a stranger or some jerk from school, I would have been able to defend myself better, but it was Jamy. Jamy, my sister. God have mercy, I couldn’t have hurt her to save my life.

  chapter eleven

  Somebody pounded on the door.

  Jamy stood over me panting for a moment, then she said, “Now what?” and she sounded normal again, bratty, like somebody was interrupting her TV show. She dropped her bloody rubber bayonet on top of me, ran to the door, and stretched on tiptoe to look out the peephole. “Oh, God,” she said, “it’s the cops.”

  I sighed and closed my eyes, feeling dead.

  “What do I do?” Jamy bleated. I opened my eyes and looked at her. She was just standing by the door with her arms crossed, with one of her sneaker toes on top of the other. It felt weird looking at her from the floor, and what the hell was she scared of?

  I said, “Let them in.”